Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

(cleantechnica.com)

50 points | by 01-_- 12 hours ago

7 comments

  • tim-tday 3 hours ago
    I wonder if it’s still too soon for a company CEO to throw up a Nazi salute or two during an internationally televised event. <checks sales data> yep, still too soon. Hopefully it always will be.
    • pseudohadamard 1 hour ago
      And that sales would plummet in a country that had problems previously with people who gave Nazi salutes, who would have thought it?
  • mcntsh 10 hours ago
    Electric cars in general don’t really make much sense in Germany.

    Most people live in apartments without access to personal chargers, combined with high electricity cost you end up not even saving money for the inconvenience.

    • zeeZ 9 hours ago
      30% of households living in single family homes is not insignificant. In the villages outside the large cities there's plenty of space to charge your car at home and an increasing amount of solar on the roof.
    • tzs 9 hours ago
      Germany has high gasoline cost. If what Google tells me is correct about current costs per kWh to charge at Tesla Superchargers there (0.40-0.70 Euro) and current gas prices there (1.70 Euro/liter) an EV charged at Superchargers would have about the same energy costs as an ICE car that gets 16 km/l if you charge at the more expensive Supercharges and an ICE car that gets 28 km/l if you charge at the less expensive Superchargers.
      • general1465 52 minutes ago
        > Superchargers would have about the same energy costs as an ICE car that gets 16 km/l if you charge at the more expensive Supercharges and an ICE car that gets 28 km/l if you charge at the less expensive Superchargers.

        And this is main problem. The thing is that most of people does not drive some big gas guzzling trucks like in USA, but hatchbacks like VW Golf which can run from 5l~8l/100km (20km/l ~ 12,5km/l) so it is very competitive with superchargers + it is much faster and more convenient than electric charger. There is nothing better than figuring out why my car does not want to talk to this charger when there is -5 deg C outside and I am losing touch in my fingerprints.

      • moepstar 2 hours ago
        Offpeak Supercharger use has even been reduced to around 25c in some places. I don’t think there’s one that costs 70c for members (I.e. Tesla owners or people paying 10€ per month).
  • xiphias2 9 hours ago
    One interesting thing for me is NVIDIA coming out with its reasoning model for self driving.

    If it works well, Tesla's strategy of keeping the car minimal/cheap to produce but with enough sensors and an upgradable hardware may become extremely useful as new techniques are coming to tackle the long tail of self-driving cases to handle.

    I'm sure Tesla will soon copy Nvidia and put a reasoning model in its cars as well.

  • JumpCrisscross 11 hours ago
    At what point does Tesla have to sell or shutter production?
    • DonThomasitos 11 hours ago
      Since they ship globally, never. At least not if it‘s ONLY Germany who‘s declining.
      • thg 11 hours ago
        They're declining worldwide and since Musk got the climate change denier elected who did away with CAFE credits at the end of Q3, Tesla is now also no longer a profitable company.
        • JumpCrisscross 10 hours ago
          > Tesla is now also no longer a profitable company

          We won’t know this until the end of January [1]. (Tesla turned a $1.4bn profit in Q3.)

          [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/prediction-elon-musk-reveal-t...

          • thg 1 hour ago
            For the last few quarters, Tesla was only profitable due to their selling CAFE credits. With those gone and their sales declining, it's all but certain that Tesla will post a loss for Q4, unless they resort to some very creative accounting tricks.
  • DonThomasitos 11 hours ago
    They peaked at a time where the competition‘s offering was still immature, partially even retrofitted combustion cars.

    Now the landscape has changed and TSLA lacks innovation. Personally, i still enjoy fanboy talk from first-gen Tesla drivers while they try to dream of a come back once Elon‘s wonder weapons finally arrive to turn the war.

  • nikanj 11 hours ago
    And this is with the Chinese cars handicapped by a double-digit punitive tariff ( https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/news/eu-comm... )
    • timmg 11 hours ago
      Arguably, China is subsidizing everything with a low currency, though. It may cancel out (or maybe more than cancel out) those tariffs.
      • bigbadfeline 10 hours ago
        > Arguably, China is subsidizing everything with a low currency

        Not really. "Subsidizing everything" is an oxymoron, if you subsidize some production it must be at the expense of other production that is providing the subsidies.

        > It may cancel out (or maybe more than cancel out) those tariffs.

        The opposite is true, tariffs reduce demand for Chinese products and thus for Chinese currency, which leads to lower yuan.

        If you want higher yuan, remove the tariffs.

      • PearlRiver 6 hours ago
        And the US has a yearly deficit of what, 2 trillion?

        Glass stone houses etc etc.

  • jacobgorm 11 hours ago
    The cars now look generic and driving them will brand you as either the type of person who gets all their news from alt right social media or someone who just can’t afford buying from a more established car maker.
    • 0x262d 10 hours ago
      sorry, owning a tesla is a sign of being poor?
      • jacobgorm 10 hours ago
        At least in Denmark where I live, since Tesla started competing on cost a few years ago, and then the DOGE fiasco. It’s the car you get if you’re already a Tesla owner and hardcore believer, or just see a car as a means of transportation and buy purely on specs. The days when Teslas were status symbols are long gone. We can buy so many other interesting EVs here, for example I just had a friend who was an EV hater six months ago come by showing off his brand new Renault R5 today. That car has 10x more character than a TM3 and costs less even if he got it fully loaded. VAG has a very strong lineup of TMY competitors that combined are vastly outselling it, and so has Kia/Hyundai and Renault. Those with more money will go for BMW, Mercedes, Audi, or even Porsche. And then there are all the Chinese brands starting to make inroads. Most here see buying Chinese as less problematic than buying Musk.
      • apothegm 10 hours ago
        Apparently the secondhand market is so bad (perhaps due to the whole thing where Tesla doesn’t permit wholly independent resale) that in some markets they’re some of the cheapest to be had that are qualified for ride share drivers. There’s a silly percentage of older teslas being used for that purpose in some cities.
      • hyperhello 10 hours ago
        In the sense that being overweight is a sign of being hungry.
    • 2478238434780 10 hours ago
      Keep your pathetic critique about 'generic' cars and 'alt-right media.' It’s nothing but the flimsy rhetoric used by your far-left terrorists to justify setting cars and factories on fire.